PPM is the package management utility for ActivePerl. It simplifies the
task of locating, installing, upgrading and removing Perl packages. The
PPM client accesses PPM repositories (collections of packages) on the
internet or on a local network. It is also used to update previously
installed packages with the latest versions and to remove unused
packages from your system.

To launch PPM's graphical user interface, run ppm
without any command line arguments:

ppm

The interface should look something like this:

When launched, PPM automatically synchronizes its local database
with the installed perl packages (including those installed manually or
via the CPAN shell). The interface is temporarily locked while this
synchronization takes place.

Hovering the mouse pointer over icons in the toolbar displays tool tips
describing what each button does. These buttons are:

All
packages: Displays all packages installed locally and
available in the repository.

Installed packages: Displays all installed
packages.

Upgradable
packages: Displays packages for which an upgrade is available
from the repository.

Packages to
install/remove: Displays packages marked for installation or removal.

Mark
for install: Marks the selected packages for installation or
upgrade.

As text is entered in the Filter field, the list of packages is
automatically updated as the substring match becomes more precise.
Click the magnifying glass icon to filter on different meta-data (e.g.
Author).

Alternatively, just start typing the name of the package. The
Package List will highlight the first package that
matches the string you have typed.

PPM allows for the addition of new install areas, which is useful for
shared ActivePerl installations where the user does not have write
permissions for the site and perl areas. New install
areas are added by simply setting up new library directories for perl to
search, and PPM will set up install areas to match. The easiest way to
add library directories for perl is to specify them in the
PERL5LIB environment variable, see the perlrun manpage for details. PPM
will create etc, bin, html directories as
needed when installing packages. If the last segment of the library
directory path is lib then the other directories will be
created as siblings of the lib directory, otherwise they will
be subdirectories.

The Repositories tab lists the repositories that PPM
is currently configured to use and allows you to add additional ones.
Simple PPM repositories are just a directory containing ppm packages.
You can create your own by putting packages in an HTTP, FTP directory or
a locally accessible mount or filesystem directory.

To add a repository fill out the fields in the Add
Repository pane and click Add.

Name: The name you want to give the new
repository.

Location: The URL of the repository. Enter an HTTP
or FTP URL, a filesystem path, or use the Browse
button to select a local directory. For password protected FTP sites,
use the format:

ftp://user:password@server/path.

To remove a repository, click the icon next to it.

Enabled repositories show the icon; disabled ones show the icon.
Click these icons to toggle between states.

Randy Kobes' excellent
package search engine, with browsable categories of the packages
at the University of Winnipeg's CPAN site, allows you to search
for modules and displays the availability of Win32 ppm packages
from a number of repositories.

On systems where ActivePerl is installed in a directory that is not writable by
users (i.e. owned by root), a new perl library location can be
defined with the PERL5LIB environment variable. PPM will recognize this library
as an install area.

To create a new, user-writable install area:

Make a directory for the library. For example:

mkdir -p ~/perl/lib

Set or modify the PERL5LIB environment variable using the
command specific to your shell (e.g. set or export).
To make this change persistent, add the command to the appropriate profile file
for the shell. For example, in bash, add a line like the following to your
.bash_profile or .bashrc file:

PERL5LIB=~/perl/lib; export PERL5LIB

Launch PPM and click the PPM Preferences button. In the
Area tab, select the new install area to make it active.

Note: On Mac OS X, user-writable install areas
called "ActivePerl" are created for all users during installation (in
/Users/<username>/Library/ActivePerl).

If you need to install packages on systems without direct access to
repositories, you can use PPMX files. These are compressed tarballs
containing the PPD file for the package and the blib tree to be
installed. You can download PPMX files from http://ppm4.activestate.com/.

To use a PPMX file:

Download the file and/or transfer it to a convenient directory on the target system.

Install the package by specifying the ppmx file explicitly, rather than just the package name. For exampleppm install c:\tmp\Date-Calc-6.3.ppmx

Some modules have dependencies that may cause them to fail to install
if those packages are not available in a repository that PPM is
connected to. You can use the ppm describe command to see
what dependencies the package has, but those packages may have their own
dependencies. The dependency chain has to be resolved manually by
starting with the lowest common prerequisite package.

Cryptographic Packages Unlike the United States, the Export
Control List of Canada places no significant restriction on the export of
cryptographic software; however, the Canadian Federal Government does require
that companies, organizations or individuals that wish to distribute
cryptographic software get a permit in order to do so. ActiveState does not
currently have this permission, so you must currently access other repositories
for the following modules:

DBD::Oracle Oracle no longer provides the Oracle client
libraries for free, so we can no longer provide DBD Oracle as a PPM/PPM3 module.
The DBD-Oracle package for ActivePerl 5.6 is the last package compiled before
the licensing changed that is still available on our site. If you wish to
compile this module locally, the source may be obtained from
www.cpan.org (see Using the CPAN shell). If
you are using Windows, a workaround solution might be to use DBD-ODBC
instead.

GD module The GD module currently is not available from the
ActiveState ppm server because of the difficulty of incorporating it into our
automated build process. The GD module is available from the University of
Winnipeg's repository.

ActiveState does not maintain or own the vast majority of the modules
available via PPM. We only pre-package those modules available from CPAN that can be built automatically. As
a result, not all PPM packages in the repository are completely
up-to-date or available for every platform.

If you require a package or package version that is not available in
a PPM repository, you can install it using the CPAN shell.

Specify the AUTHOR and ABSTRACT parameters in the Makefile.PL. However you
should only pass them to WriteMakefile if the version of the perl is greater
than 5.005 - older perls do not have these parameters added and do not expect to
see them. This is an example Makefile.PL:

This setting applies to PPM when it is launched by clicking the PPM
icon.

Linux, Solaris or HP-UX

Set the http_proxy environment variable using the command specific
to your shell (e.g. set or export). To make
this change persistent, add the command to the appropriate profile
file for the shell. For example, in bash, add a line
like the following to your .bash_profile or .bashrc
file:

If you require a module that is not available via ppm,
or you require a more recent version, you can build the module from CPAN sources. The CPAN
shell is a command-line interface for fetching and building modules
directly from CPAN archives. To run it, enter the following command: